Craig's
List is an online free bulletin board where anyone can post classified
ads of nearly any kind. There are Craig's Lists, or CL's, for most large
cities, featuring helpful ads for things like housing, jobs, items for
sale, personals, and, most entertainingly, Missed Connections and Casual
Encounters.

These last two, despite their ostensibly practical purposes, have devolved
into a free-for-all where rumors are spread, bad poetry is written, battles
are won and lost, and hearts are broken, all for our entertainment. The
Week In Craig is your guide to the most fascinating accidental literary
magazine on the web.

MISSED OUT ON MISSED CONNECTIONS? an intro

Missed Connections is supposed to be a place for finding long lost friends
or hooking up with attractive strangers you saw on the street or the subway
but were too shy to talk to. Many posts still fall into those categories,
especially in smaller cities, but the New York board is crammed with ongoing
conversations, personal messages, and, lately, ideas for ways to turn
the subway system into a meat market.

"We need a very simple way to visually "signal" to
one another that we are...interested in the other person...I suggest this
very simple signal...you would take either hand and brush it by your ear
twice in a very unconscious kind of way. If the other person is interested,
they would simply do the same. And, if it's really too difficult to initiate
a conversation at that moment... each person would look for the other
on CL."

This post ignited a firestorm of replies (and even made it on several
other online bulletin boards.) CLers seemed divided into two camps: those
who thought the idea "pure
genius":

"I agree, this "SIGNALING" idea is pure genius ! A
while ago someone hatched an idea about single people meeting on the first
car of the subway, but that idea died out. I...think this idea really
could work! "

"I think I have been signaled ! Am I the first ?
You: Guy reading the NY Times with black wool overcoat and wire rim glasses.
Me: Reading the WSJ (or at least pretending to) with black leather jacket
and long black silky hair.
Did you 'signal me' ? I did not signal back because I was unsure if you
really signaled me or if you have a nervous habit of touching your ear.
You look cute, tell me more !"

Now we all have one more thing to worry about in crowded subway cars --
God forbid our ears actually itch!

MEET THE COMMANDER OF THE WILLIAMSBURG ARMY

The other big topic this week was an escalation of an old war between
those who think residents of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, aka "hipsters,"
suck, and those who think they don't, most of whom, curiously, self-identify
as hipsters.

This argument takes many forms, including a recent spin-off battle between
F-train riders versus L-train riders, and seems to strike quite an emotional
nerve with CLers. This week, someone calling his/herself "The Commander
of the Williamsburg Army" issued
a call to action for fellow hipsters:

"If further dissatisaction (sic) is heard coming up from the
army of the boring blah-blah, we, the members of the Williamsburg Army
will have no other choice but... to declare war. And our weapons are our
creative fashion and wonderful subversive youth, our "affect,"
which is being ruthlessly judged."

This declaration could not go ignored by earnest combatants and sarcastic
smartasses alike. The one thing we all could agree on, however, was a
universal
hatred of yuppies.

"Ugly eighties leather jacket: $150.
Butt-crack showing, low-slung jeans: $85.
Trying too hard to look droopy and careless: Priceless.
I hate yuppies, too, but you're no different from that other group of
blind conformists."

This and other anti-war sentiment prompted a heated
reply from our fearless Commander:

"Oh, so trenchant in your anti-hipster rhetoric!
Your authenticity is a waste of my time. I've got preening to do. Go back
to your nutter butter basket bitches and cram it with walnuts, short-stack."

"Me - Commander of the Williamsburg Army, mussy, dressy, messy
but not Stussy, label cut off of my Manhattan Portage bag for shame, new
labels sewn on my other stuff. Pants so low on my hips you can see my
pubic Mohawk dyed pink and my Def Lep tattoo. On my way to my "job
thing" but really I play in a band or something, you know how it
goes. Keyboards. You: Totally ethnic Brooklynite keeping it real, like
hella real. You've lived here your whole life and know what's up and stuff.
I was making a lot of eye contact so I could rob you of your authentic
creative energy...."

Ahh, Casual Encounters. It's the last stall of the unisex-bathroom-right-after-last-call
of the web. A place where the lonely, the desperate, the horny, the crazy,
the bored, and probably a few murderers, can shoot from the id and the
rest of us voyeurs can feel superior and prudish while simultaneously
losing our faith in the inherent goodness of the human soul. A place where
strangers in the night can exchange puerile electronic glances, where
recurring characters are gossiped about, where all the 420 you could ever
want is just one blow-job away, where everyone is safe, sane, discreet,
hot, hung, and disease-free. Or at least they say they are...

THE NO STRINGS BRIGADE:

Even though the point of the Casual Encounters section is that the encounters
advertised are casual in nature, many posters feel it necessary to specify
the lack of strings attached to their proposed one-night wham-bam sessions.

"Looking
For Pussy", for example, wishes prospective purveyors of pussy
to know that they need not worry about the potential awkwardness of a
post-coital marriage proposal: "...a girl with a tight pussy
lookin to be treated like a slut. No strings attached."

"XTC"
is similarly generous, and even throws in FREE CONDOMS: "artist-
swm -late 30's- handsome...sane and d&d free- toys, lube and condoms.
if youre really cool u can fuck me with a strap on... send foto with reply
if u want to play- no strings!"

THE "I DON'T USUALLY DO THIS BUT I HAVE A
SPECIAL GOOD REASON THAT MAKES IT OKAY" CLUB

"I'm on cloud 9 -- I just sold a screenplay! I need someone
to share the love with! I'm 28 y/o and look exactly like a cross
between Chris Klein and Rob Lowe (note: not Chad Lowe, who weeps when
his wife wins an Oscar and doesn't thank him)... I'll be happy going to
a museum, grabbing a cup 'o tea, or just screwing like bunnies..."

From the Brooklyn Bridge Real Estate Company comes a call for participants
in Important
Scientific Research Masturbation Study: "I am seeking people
who are willing to let me observe them while they masturbate...."

Some don't seem to understand what quotation
marks mean: "I am single 40's jewish manhattan male seeking
to find one "lady" who likes to dress and act sexy in a respectful
"relationship"."

From the Maybe You Should Have Thought of That Before the Surgery department:
"Try out my enlarged Penis - m4w -- Ladies, I got a penis enlargement
6 weeks ago and am now ready to give it a try. I am a tall handsome white
man that used to have a 6 inch penis. I am now a FULL 9 inches... ps -
I have my own place"

And his counterpart:
"Male with little wee-wee, Female(s) to laugh and humiliate ...
nice bod, little wee wee. If any girls want to meet and laugh, you can
bring your girlfriends also..."

Sometimes it's best just to stop beating
around the...um...bush: "Dammit - everybody else gets to
put up their crazy posting - I want pussy NOW! Give it to me - give it
up!!! Stop screwing around and - give me the pussy!!!! NOWWWW!!!!"

"I'm looking for WOMAN
I'm looking for OLDER WOMAN
I am handsome, intelligent, white , professional, young male from Europe.
I am "new" in NYC, I feel alone and I am looking for woman who
will be
the best friend of mine, the closest friend...
This is a true ad. "